Bikini-clad vinyl nerdery, rap music, and assorted tomboyisms.

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If this isn’t the best MLB/Parliament/Jimmy Buffett collab post you’ve seen today, please keep it to yourself and let me keep up the charade. Don’t hurt my feelings.

Citizens of the universe, recording angels, I have returned to claim the pyramids and also to remind you that Dave “The Cobra” Parker fucking ruled and I absolutely HAD to do a tribute post. (T-shirt courtesy of Homage – thanks, guys!; glide in my stride and dip in my hip courtesy of genetics – thanks, Mom and Dad!)

I have zero allegiance to the Pittsburgh baseball Pirates, but I know the importance of names like Stargell, Clemente, and McCutchen, and I damn sure know the importance of Dave and his shirt of interplanetary galactic radness made possible by the combined efforts of the cotton industry, the really pure coke of ’70s northeast America, and George Stanley Clinton, jr. I just watched the 30 for 30 about the ’89 World Series, during which I realized that Rickey Henderson isn’t the only Athletic I adore – Dave was also on that squad that swept SF, prompting me to remember the existence of this picture and then do a tribute to him.

[I didn’t have a Pirates uni to put behind me like Dave in his picture, but the A1A album by Jimmy Buffett will do, as it contains “A Pirate Looks at Forty” (the song that made me realize Buffett can write a great song and is more than just “the ‘Margaritaville’ guy who sometimes gets thrown out of Heat games”)].

“WHY IN THE FUCK would I listen to Physical Graffiti when this new Funkadelic record just came out? USE YOUR HEAD.” – me, being all indignant during the spring of 1975, if I had been around back then. (Incidentally, “Use your head” is also my go-to strategy for getting a backstage pass. George Clinton was so taken with the idea he wrote a song about it.)

Later on in ’75, I would fall in deep deep throbbing love with records by the Meters, the Isleys, the Players of Ohio, Rufus, Burning Spear, Tom Waits, Heart (YEAH I SAID IT), and Curtis. But that spring was pretty epic – Chocolate City came out in March and Let’s Take It to the Stage came out a month later because George Clinton is the god damned devil.
(Special thank you to Natalie for handling black Sharpie duties)

I believe the expression is “The bigger the headache, the bigger the pill.” Less popular but no less true is the expression “The bigger my love for Dr. Funkenstein, licensed administer of ear-canal narcotics including but not limited to rubbery bassline antidepressants, the greater the likelihood that I’m willing to forego monogamy and share my groom with my other sister-wives so we can blow the cobwebs out your mind.”

I wish George would give women a little wiggle room when it comes to roles – we are backup singers and side-project wives, and that’s it – but if I complain I’ll get kicked out of the family and he’ll easily find another fake wife to hit in the protons and make sure her hips keep moving. Having to share Dr. Funkenstein with some other ladies is better than no Funkenstein at all.